Remember Charlie Sheen’s “goddess” Bree Olson? Looks like the former Penthouse Pet and adult film actress is adding band manager to her resume after signing to represent Tight, a band made up entirely of porn stars. … Continue Reading

We are a species full of judgment. We judge one another on how we look, what we drive, where we work out, who we know, where we work, what OS we prefer – if it exists, we’ve judged it. And no judgment is as harsh as that which is attached to attempts at seduction. You can imagine our horror when we ran across an old post on Spike listing James Brown’s “Sex Machine” and Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” at numbers one and two on their Top 10 Best Songs to Have Sex To list. … Continue Reading

Let’s play a theology game. I’ll make an argument, and then give you words to substitute into the argument. It’ll be fun!

The case for Biblical vegetarianism is found in Eden, the paradise of God’s original creation, where God created people as vegetarians (1:29). God only changed things after the situation went horribly wrong and as a condescension to the new reality of sin (9:3). As holy people we should be like those in Eden, which is like Heaven. Therefore, we should be vegetarian.

Our favorite anti-feminist feminist, Camille Paglia goes to town on Lady Gaga in The Sunday Times magazine, questioning whether the rise of Gaga indicates the death of sex. Those of us who enjoy Gaga are “marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty,” Paglia says — are we? … Continue Reading

“I go through guys like money flying out the hands. They try to change me but they realize they can’t and every tomorrow is a day I never plan. If u gonna be my man understand: I can’t be tamed, I can’t be saved, I can’t be blamed, I can’t can’t…”

Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols: a kid, an icon, a tragedy, a legacy. He defined a generation and the radiation from its zeitgeist-shattering explosion can still be felt today.

You know, if you look hard enough under the VersaSpa tans, over-processed vocals, and senseless Top 40 hits.

Oh, who are we kidding? You can’t. It’s mostly shit. Glittering, beautiful shit, but shit. The only motif that persists is drugs, but even that doesn’t really hit us the way it should — the paparazzi bulbs are too bright. It’s an expected disaster, all of it.

Other generations were defined by their music — it was the battle cry, the unifying force. We’re too bored, ADD and apathetic. It’s like we have nothing to fight for; we grew up with too much handed to us and now all we can do is sit around and bitch on Twitter. That’s our legacy. Bitching on Twitter.

Yeah, we saw your Grammy tweets. At least Taylor Swift is singing. At least Pink is swinging. At least Lady Gaga is pounding a piano and Beyoncé is hair-swishing.

We here at Sex and the 405 have an assignment for you today: do something. Actually take a stance by doing. Kiss someone, punch someone, make something.

In the 70s, Georgina Spelvin starred in a flick that has become iconic in the porn genre: The Devil in Miss Jones.

Directed by Gerard Damiano, who had worked on Deep Throat a year prior, The Devil in Miss Jones is a perverse tale of abandon and despair that perfectly encapsulates my greatest fear: a life of release that meets a tragic end in the eternal fire of indifference.

Spelvin, now 73, is back, in Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus” video. Toby Dye creates a masterful montage of an interview with the porn actress and scenes from the film, where she is 36.

It is a bizarre mind trip buoyed on the sweet vocals of Massy Star’s Hope Sandoval that exposes an aspect of the adult entertainer in a way no music video ever has.

Watch for yourself (or, if you’re at work or otherwise unable, read the transcript below):

Spelvin: I, at one time tried my hand at being a prostitute–you know, doing tricks for money with a very nice madam and just completely bombed. I just was no good at it. I absolutely could not manufacture the excitement, the sexual excitement i needed in order to have sex. So plenty people would ask me how could you do it in front of a camera then? The truth of it, when there is a camera running, it is so thrilling. God help me, I love the camera.

Sandoval: It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm, we can roll ourselves over ’cause we’re uncomfortable. Oh where the devil makes us sin but we like it when we’re spinning in his grip.

Spelvin: The fact that it was a fuck film–I was frightened to begin with. But there is something about making a movie when you are in the film set. Anything is possible. The narrative of sex–of course first there is attraction: our hearts beat fast and our palms get sweaty and I get a tingle on the outside of my arms. Foreplay: getting to know each other, and knowing exactly what the other person’s sexual triggers are, whether it’s the little spot behind the ear, the inside of the elbow, the kiss on the neck, the flittering of the tongue across the clitoris.

Sandoval: It’s unfortunate that when we feel a storm, we can roll ourselves over when we’re uncomfortable. Oh, well the devil makes us sin but we like it when we’re spinning in his grip.

Spelvin: Oh, boy. An orgasm is that point in time that can’t be measured. A mystical instant that doesn’t really exist in this dimension.

Sandoval: Love is like a sin, my love, for the one that feels it the most. Look at her with a smile like a flame–she will love you like a fly will never love you, again.

Spelvin: I will have to confess that the eroticism and excitement being expressed was very deliberate. It’s not something that I said oh my god this is the most wonderful thing in the world, I can’t wait to do this again. Probably the most uncomfortable and humiliating thing I’ve ever done on film. But nonetheless there I was because the truth of it is: I love the camera. We are our own devil.

This is a single from Massive Attack’s album Heligoland, due out February 9.

A product with a local fare, the calendar features twelve local independent bombshells who want to use their talents and smashing eye candy power to raise money for a recycling campaign as well as to fund a scholarship for a young girl to attend Silverlake Conservatory of Music.

For 20 bucks, you get a calendar and a killer compilation of music with tracks from each calendar girl. Not that you needed any more incentive to see these ladies up against your wall all year long.

Here’s the issue with euphemisms: they confuse the fuck out of people.

Recently several news outlets reported that Lady Gaga had once been afraid of sex. Or intimacy. Or both. They’re not the same thing and anyone with an ounce of gray matter knows it, but because the media is either terrified of talking about sex truthfully or eager to exploit a juicy headline, we’ll never know which.

A cursory listen of Gaga’s albums suggests she has no issue with sex (how many women do you know will so readily admit they wanna take a ride on your disco stick?). Songs like “Poker Face” and “I Like It Rough” off The Fame, on the other hand, clearly illustrate a fear of intimacy:

Your love is nothing I can’t fight,
can’t sleep with the man who dims my shine.
I’m in the bedroom with tissues and when
I know you’re outside banging but I won’t let you in.
‘Cause it’s a hard life, with love in the world
and I’m a hard girl–loving me’s like chewing on pearls.

On her new album, The Fame Monster, the track “Bad Romance” also alludes to this fear–and don’t get me started on the music video. Following an oversexualized walk down the aisle, Gaga and her groom are consumed by flames, which leave the man a charred skeleton.

I want your love and I want your revenge.
I want your love, I don’t want to be friends.
I don’t want to be friends.
No, I don’t wanna be friends.
I don’t wanna be friends!
I want your bad romance.

The cat’s out of the bag. I love Lady Gaga because every little girl who’s terrified of intimacy needs an anthem. So much the better when an artist gives you a handful.

I wanna roll with him, a hard pair we will be.
A little gambling is fun when you’re with me–I love it.
Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun
and baby when it’s love if its not rough it isn’t fun.

A morbid part of me can’t wait to hear her fall head over heels. I’ll tell you one thing–I won’t be satisfied unless it’s as bloody as Courtney Love’s “Uncool.”

There is a mix for every brand of passion, you’ll realize, if you take enough time to think about it. But if you’re not the sort of person with that kind of time on your hands (i.e., funemployed like moi), you’re in luck.

Introducing 30 Seconds to Mars’ This Is War: hands down the sexiest album of our time.

“We spent two years of our lives working on that record, and it was us against the world,” frontman Jared Leto told MTV last month. “There were times that it was overwhelming. Everything that was going on was brutal, but there were beautiful moments as well… It was a case of survival, to tell the truth.”

I had the pleasure of meeting Leto on Dr. Drew’s Loveline earlier tonight. During a break, I asked him whether he realized 30 Seconds to Mars was creating the ultimate soundtrack of desire.

“Well, a lot of songs are very sexual in nature,” he told me. “I think rock and roll has gotten really asexual.”

That’s something he felt 30 Seconds to Mars should take on.

“That’s obviously a big part of all of our lives, and I thought it important to address some of that,” Leto said.

They did a good job. Never has an album so powerfully mixed animal desire, desperate want, angst and fantastic soul licking as This Is War does.

“We were literally having to kill ourselves at times. I had it written on the wall: ‘Kill yourself to finish.’ There were no other options,” Leto said. “So we did that. It was a time to redefine, rediscover, reinvent, reinvest in each other.”

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That Steam allows the objectification and sexualization of female characters in a variety of its games but refuses to accept a game about actually engaging with women in a more interactive fashion is astonishingly backward.

That the site doesn’t take measures to protect user content and has shown incompetence or negligence in regard to user privacy, all the while prohibiting victims from warning others about predatory behavior creates an environment where it is nearly impossible for members of the community to take care of themselves and one another. By enabling FetLife to continue espousing a code of silence, allowing the spinning self-created security issues as “attacks,” and not pointing out how disingenuous FetLife statements about safety are, we are allowing our community to become a breeding ground for exploitation.

Should people who benefit (parents, siblings, children, roommates!) from the earnings of “commercial sex acts” (any sexual conduct connected to the giving or receiving of something of value) be charged with human trafficking? Should someone who creates obscene material that is deemed “deviant” be charged as with human trafficking? Should someone who profits from obscene materials be charged with human trafficking? Should people transporting obscene materials be charged with human trafficking? Should a person who engages in sex with someone claiming to be above the age of consent or furnishing a fake ID to this effect be charged with human trafficking? What if I told you the sentences for that kind of conviction were eight, 14 or 20 years in prison, a fine not to exceed $500,000, and life as a registered sex offender?

If you are a woman, you might be given a chance to prove yourself in this community. Since there is no standard definition of what a “geek” is and it will vary from one judge to the next anyway, chances of failing are high (cake and grief counseling will be available after the conclusion of the test!). If you somehow manage to succeed, you’ll be tested again and again by anyone who encounters you until you manage to establish yourself like, say, Felicia Day. But even then, you’ll be questioned. As a woman, your whole existence within the geek community will be nothing but a series of tests — if you’re lucky. If you aren’t lucky, you’ll be harassed and threatened and those within the culture will tacitly agree that you deserve it.

Zak’s original field, it turns out, is economics, a far cry from the hearts and teddy bears we imagine when we consider his nickname. But after performing experiments on generosity, Zak stumbled on the importance of trust in interactions, which led him, rather inevitably, to research about oxytocin. Oxytocin, you might remember, is a hormone that has been linked previously to bonding — between mothers and children primarily, but also between partners. What Zak has done is take the research a step further, arguing in his recent book, The Moral Molecule, that oxytocin plays a role in determining whether we are good or evil.

Let’s talk about the strippers. Whether they like to be half-naked or not, whether they enjoy turning you on or not, there’s one thing they all have in common: they’re working. Whether you think that taking one’s clothes off for money is a great choice of career is really beside the point (is it a possibility for you to make $500 per hour at your job without a law degree? Just asking). These women are providing fantasy, yes, but that is their job. And as a patron of the establishment where they work, you need to treat them like you would anyone else who provides a service to you.

About

Sex and the 405 is what your newspaper would look like if it had a sex section.

Here you’ll find news about the latest research being conducted to figure out what drives desire, passion, and other sex habits; reviews of sex toys, porn and other sexy things; coverage of the latest sex-related news that have our mainstream media's panties up in a bunch; human interest pieces about sex and desire; interviews with people who love sex, or hate sex, or work in sex, or work to enable you to have better sex; opinion pieces that relate to sex and society; and the sex-related side of celebrity gossip. More...